Brendan Ryan

If nothing else, the annual Rawlings Gold Glove Award winners remind us that most voters probably don’t actually watch much baseball. If they did, Derek Jeter would not have taken home the award in 2010. If Rawlings has accomplished anything, it’s that they have got one thing right. The additional step of naming finalists for [...]

Whenever someone familiar with the Cardinals goes on a diatribe about the great lopsided trades that have worked in favor of the team, the Ernie Broglio for Lou Brock deal nearly always gets mentioned. What about the trades that didn’t work out so well for the Redbirds? Do people find no value in evaluating such [...]

Think the Cardinals have at least average to above average players at every position on the field? Think again. According to the metric “Team Runs Saved”, the Cardinals rank in a tie for 6th in the NL with a -4 runs saved for the season. Ranking 6th out of 16 teams sounds pretty good, or [...]

Let’s just dispense with the pleasantries and list them all here, shall we? This way, Cards fans have a repository to come back to game after game, without having to continue to come up with new reasons for a lost season. In no particular order: Moths Ryan Franklin Takashi Saito Rob Drake Tony Rasmus Dan [...]

This post has been clanking around in my head for some time, a couple of weeks now at least, just waiting for the right moment – the right time to finally put words to screen, to find what it is that remains of the 2011 Cardinals season. Away from the whiplash fans (“Tonight’s win was [...]

The Cardinals have spent most of this season playing with house money, and they know it. The $8M they bet on Lance Berkman may have been the best signing of last offseason in terms of risk/reward. A good bit of Cardinal Nation is now drinking the Kool-Aid, and I don’t have a problem with that [...]

I thought about titling this post “Re-opening old wounds” – for I expect it to be painful for many of us, myself included. I do my best to be balanced about baseball, I really do. Objectively viewing certain situations and outcomes is good for my blood pressure, I’ve found. But sometimes, unabashed homer or Kool-Aid [...]

Drew Silva from NBCSports.com’s Hardball Talk blog and Rotoworld.com joins us to talk about the Cardinals and the NL Central. We touched on several topics (ranging across a couple recording dates) including the Cards’ defense, bullpen, Chris Carpenter‘s struggles, and Ryan Theriot versus Brendan Ryan (and Tyler Greene, and Nick Punto, and Daniel Descalso, and [...]

…about the 2010 Cardinals? “I’d play against these guys on one leg,” Phillips insisted before the game. “We have to beat these guys. All they do is b***h and moan about everything — all of them. They’re little b***hes — all of them. “I really hate the Cardinals. Compared to the Cardinals, I love the [...]

I’m usually hesistant to predict individual awards, because there is about a 20% chance of getting any of them correct, and I’m all about hitting the 1/4 mark. Then again, this is for the UCB, and I’ll gladly sacrifice quality for quantity in the name of the UCB. American League AL MVP – Robinson Cano [...]